{"id":3555,"date":"2023-10-30T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3555"},"modified":"2023-10-18T16:47:01","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T15:47:01","slug":"trekaday-115","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/10\/30\/trekaday-115\/","title":{"rendered":"Trekaday #115: The Catwalk, Dawn, Stigma, Cease Fire, Future Tense"},"content":{"rendered":"

ENT S02E12 The Catwalk <\/strong>(\"3.5). An actual problem for the crew to solve (instead of a morbid fantasy or silly sex dream). A deadly wavefront is approaching and as they can\u2019t outrun it, the crew needs to shelter in the ship\u2019s nacelles. I note that \u201ccan\u2019t outrun it\u201d means that this \u201cwavefront\u201d is approaching at something like 350 times the speed of light. Hell of a wavefront. As usual, the only people tasked with solving the problem are the seven whose names are in the opening titles (Travis is on latrine duty). Mike Vejar creates some nicely claustrophobic images as the ship is shut down, but the people in trouble are just their jobs, as usual \u2013 when Starfleet\u2019s finest aren\u2019t bitching and whining about the food like little kids.<\/p>\n

ENT S02E13 Dawn <\/strong>(\"3). On paper, Archer makes a decent fist of building an alliance with today\u2019s lumpy-faced aggressor who\u2019s trying to get these damned kids off his lawn. But I can\u2019t help thinking than a little of Picard or Janeway\u2019s charm would have gone a long way. Bakula, so effortlessly easygoing in Quantum Leap, seems to imagine that being a captain means always being angry and plays even this scene as if he\u2019s giving his opposite number a telling-off. Trip makes a better job of making a new friend on his first day at big school, despite the fact that it seems as if other spacefaring species can\u2019t make or don\u2019t want universal translators. If you liked Darmok (or The Enemy \u2013 or Arena!), you\u2019ll hate this.<\/p>\n

ENT S02E14 Stigma <\/strong>(\"3.5). Mind-melds it seems are not merely out of fashion on Vulcan, as we learned in Fusion, but actually spread disease, and T\u2019Pol is a sufferer \u2013 again as a result of events in Fusion. Far from applying logic to the situation and realising that increasing the sum of knowledge about a disease, how so ever transmitted, can only be of benefit, they act like blinkered and prejudiced humans in what I assume is meant to be an AIDS metaphor. As usual, it\u2019s John Billingsley and Jolene Blalock\u2019s sensitive playing that makes this work at all \u2013 I\u2019m furiously uninterested in the subplot with Phlox\u2019s second wife flirting with Trip. Once more, Trip\u2019s choice of movies is resolutely 20th century. Bakula is still stuck in angry headmaster mode. Travis and Malcolm are both virtually MIA.<\/p>\n

ENT S02E15 Cease Fire <\/strong>(\"3). More ret-conning of the Star Trek\u2019s most celebrated alien species. This show is so keen to create friction between humans and their more experienced galactic tour guides that the curious and enlightened Vulcans \u2013\u00a0who brokered risky peace deals with both Romulans and Klingons in past iterations of the show \u2013 are now presented as obsessively secretive, warlike, suspicious, bigoted, prideful and petty. The one thing they are never portrayed as is logical (T\u2019Pol aside). One could be forgiven for thinking that Berman and Braga had never actually watched Star Trek. Once again, the Andorians come off as far more reasonable and pleasant. The once subtle and complex P\u2019Jem storyline is now all colouring inside the lines, and repetitive combat sequences, sad to say. And once again Jolene Blalock is the MVP of the episode, while Travis, Malcolm and Hoshi get almost nothing to do and Trip only gets to complain. This episode even manages to waste Suzie Plakson!<\/p>\n

ENT S02E16 Future Tense <\/strong>(\"3.5). In a galaxy awash with humanoid-looking aliens, it takes T\u2019Pol a few seconds\u2019 visual inspection to conclude that the Norman Bates\u2019s mother-looking dude on the derelict craft that the Enterprise happens upon is definitively human. Is she a walking tricorder now? (She\u2019s also wrong, as Phlox later determines.) In any case, the Acne lads want the ship back so this is a Temporal Cold War story. Those often feel higher-stakes and have an energy that other episodes lack, but it can also feel like our characters are making a guest appearance on someone else\u2019s show. This time, the focus is mainly kept on the Enterprise, which suddenly finds itself the prettiest girl at the party, thanks to the contents of launch bay two. This is much more exciting stuff than we\u2019re used to, with some great race-against-time\/thrilling-escape-from-death material, but nothing that our crew tries has any effect, so once again, they\u2019re reduced to helpless patsies and a promising story turns out not to have an ending.<\/p>\n

The commitment to including only seven crew members in any operation becomes actively ludicrous here. Needing to solve an engineering problem, Chief Engineer Tucker selects the ship\u2019s Chief Tactical Officer to assist him, resulting in no tactical officer on the bridge in a combat situation during which it\u2019s up to communications officer Hoshi trying to lock alien meddlers out of the computer system. Later when Malcolm wants help monkeying with a torpedo, it\u2019s the motherfucking Captain who lends a hand. Where\u2019s the rest of the crew??<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ENT S02E12 The Catwalk (). An actual problem for the crew to solve (instead of a morbid fantasy or silly sex dream). A deadly wavefront is approaching and as they can\u2019t outrun it, the crew needs to shelter in the ship\u2019s nacelles. I note that \u201ccan\u2019t outrun it\u201d means that this \u201cwavefront\u201d is approaching at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[539,19,79,528],"class_list":["post-3555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-enterprise","tag-reviews","tag-star-trek","tag-trekaday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-Vl","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3555"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3557,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3555\/revisions\/3557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}